SQL Server does a great job of handling concurrency & ensuring that users can make changes in multi-user systems without conflict. However there are times a strict calling order is needed.   Read more...

Part 1 of a 4 part series about ADO, this is a beginner level article designed to get you started using the ADO connection object. If you haven't used ADO so far, why not see what it's all about?   Read more...

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary!   Read more...

This article shows you how to identify SQL Server performance problems and explains how the SERIALIZABLE transaction isolation level effected the performance of an OLTP application.  Read more...

Robert is back this week with a look at the text data type. Not the easiest thing to work with, but sometimes a varchar just doesn't give you the range you need.   Read more...

This article by Simon Galbraith (from Red Gate software, maker of SQL Compare) discusses migrating changes from development to staging, QA, and on to production. If you've never seen the need for a schema compare tool (Steve Jones!), this is worth reading.  Read more...

Ryan demonstrates how he arrived at a solution that allows you to create scripts from a stored procedure using SQL-DMO. If you get interested in DMO, we've got quite a bit of additional content here on the site to help you get going! Ryan is a new author here on the site, please take a minute to read his article, add a comment, maybe just say hello.   Read more...

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

This one is pretty interesting, Andy discusses a few things he sees in comments that not only fail to add value, they end up costing extra time. There's room for discussion here, but definitely a discussion worth having - comments can make you or break you, here's a chance to think about what you think is important in commenting and pass that on to your development team.   Read more...

Are you using default values for your parameters? Using named parameters when you call the proc or passing the values by ordinal? Should you be? Andy thinks 6 out of 10 of our readers will agree with his point of view, we'll be a little more conservative and guess that 5 of out 10 will be closer.   Read more...

Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary!   Read more...

Part 1 of a 4 part series about ADO, this is a beginner level article designed to get you started using the ADO connection object. If you haven't used ADO so far, why not see what it's all about?   Read more...

Ever have a large batch of scripts you need to run? It takes a while if you have to open each one in Query Analyzer and execute it. One of our readers proposed an alternative - take a look the small app Andy Warren wrote to make doing this task a breeze.   Read more...